November 30, 2008

UPDATE: Reader Bill Jones notes that this report is false. At least I think this is the one he means. He rather churlishly just kept telling me I had a wrong story linked, but wouldn’t provide the specific item. I’m happy to correct errors, but in general it’s nice to know exactly which post is being complained about. Name-calling and suggestions that I search “CNN” on my blog is not so nice. But hey, even jerks can correct errors, though they tend to do it in jerkish ways.

November 30, 2008

MARK STEYN ON MUMBAI: Just go read it, okay? But here’s a bit: “What’s relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events.”

An armed citizenry would help a lot. So would a system that let text-messaging guide responders (but beware of spoofing). On the other hand, this is no super-tactic. It takes a lot more training and resources than a car bomb, to do less damage — except for the media-induced fear, which is the main goal, but which peaks the first time it’s tried.

Plus this: ‘But we’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It’s the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You’re sitting in some distant foreign capital but you’re minded to pull off a Bombay-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological-front organizations. You’ve already made landfall. . . . This isn’t law enforcement but an ideological assault — and we’re fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too.”

November 30, 2008

DAVID ALTMAN: Lessons from Mumbai: “Today, we see the emergence of a dark, new, and different army, with new branches that include all the components of a military, yet still utilize the terror doctrine. The advantage of terrorist armies is first and foremost the fact they are not subjected to any law or international convention. They do not face any pressure and they are not accountable to anyone. They tie the hands of the responding force, which is the only side subjected to conventions pertaining to human rights, war captives, and the targeting of civilians.”

UPDATE: Reader Steve Turney emails: “David Altman calls for creating ‘an international anti-terror force… this force must be specialized, it must study the new threat, and it must be able to provide an immediate response by forces trained especially to that end.’ If the Indian forces were slow to respond, how much faster would an international force be? Where would they be based? Murtha might recommend Okinawa.”

Yeah. I think Altman meant something a bit more preemptive, and not reactive. But if you want first responders with guns to be fast, then the first responders have to already be on the scene. Which means they need to be the kind of people previously described as “victims,” only with guns . . . .

November 30, 2008

November 30, 2008

SO MUCH FOR post-racial America, I guess. “The number two man at NBC News believes Barack Obama’s skin color gives him more legitimacy around the world than possibly any American leader in history.”

UPDATE: Reader Thomas Prewitt writes: “I find it curious that no one at NBC ever said that our black female Secretary of State has more legitimacy around the world than possibly any Secretary of State in history.” Yeah, go figure.

November 30, 2008

As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. “We believe that — ‘we’ means the political elite — that all cultures are equal,” he says. “I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You’re not a xenophobe, you’re not a racist, you’re not a crazy guy if you say, ‘My culture is better than yours.’ A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better.”

November 30, 2008

With his governorship entering its final years and his ability to attract the spotlight intact, the question is arising more frequently: What will Arnold do?

Will he share the stage with Al Gore as a global environmental crusader, promote green technology for an Obama administration, run for the U.S. Senate? Or might he pursue political reform on a broader scale, as he has hinted in appearances with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who shares Schwarzenegger’s independent streak?

Whether he’s marketable on any of that stuff will largely depend on whether he can stave off bankruptcy for California without a federal bailout. But if he follows in Al Gore’s footsteps, he’ll presumably be a bit braver.

November 30, 2008

JOHN KASS on Dick Durbin and George Ryan: “It was as if the Combine reached out and grabbed the people of Illinois and slapped us hard with a backhand across the mouth, letting us know who runs things, the sting of the knuckles on our nose to remind us that Illinois is not Camelot. . . . In what universe does redemption come without cost, where cynicism so casually dresses itself up as mercy and compassion? Here. In this place. In Illinois.” Read the whole thing.

November 30, 2008

FROM BOOMERANG CHILDREN to boomerang parents. “Between 2000 and 2007, the number of people 65 and older living with their adult children increased by more than 50 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”

November 30, 2008

November 30, 2008

NOW THEY TELL US: Obama’s “Not Black,” according to a piece in the Washington Post. Hmm. Gates reappointed at Defense, an Iraq-Hawk Secretary of State, keeping the tax cuts, and now the next President turns out not to be black — hey, they told me if I voted for McCain we’d get a third term for Bush, and I guess they were right!

November 30, 2008

November 30, 2008

Are congressional Democrats truly committed to dealing with the economic and fiscal policy challenges they face next year? The answer will be seen in how they address their increasingly problematic Charlie Rangel situation.

Scarcely a day goes by without yet another ethical impropriety coming to light regarding the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee.

November 29, 2008

THE MUMBAI ATTACKS: Racist: “And as Indian commandos ended the bloody 59-hour siege at the Taj yesterday by killing the last three Islamic gunmen, baby-faced Kasab was dispassionately detailing the background to the mayhem. He described how its mastermind briefed the group to ‘target whites, preferably Americans and British’.”

November 29, 2008

ANOTHER UNIT CITATION FOR THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE: Early Data Shows Strong Black Friday. “Sales during the day after Thanksgiving rose 3 percent to $10.6 billion, according to preliminary figures released Saturday by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago-based research firm that tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets.” Thanks, folks: You may have saved the economy! The only bad news is, the discounts may not be as deep after this weekend . . . .

November 29, 2008

A SIGN THAT THE LAW IS BAD LAW AND NEEDS TO BE CHANGED? Or is it just an excuse? Legal Hurdles in West Slow Pursuit of Pirates. “While the pirates have been buying GPS devices, satellite phones and more-powerful outboard motors, officials in Europe have been discussing jurisdictional issues surrounding the arrest of pirates on the high seas and even the possibility that the pirates might demand asylum if brought onto European Union shores.”

If the 21st Century nation-state can’t even fight pirates, what’s it good for, exactly? Collecting taxes? What happens when taxpayers decide they’d rather be pirates?

November 29, 2008

November 29, 2008

November 29, 2008

PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW WHAT I THINK about this Asus 10″ notebook PC. I haven’t used one, but at $423 for an Atom-powered machine with XP, a bigger screen and keyboard than my quite-nice 9″ Asus, a 160GB hard drive and 7-hour battery life, it sounds good. I like my 9″ Asus XP machine a lot, but it’s not nearly as capable as this one and it cost nearly as much.

What you get is pretty much a 12-inch chassis notebook with a great keyboard, a terrific 10-inch screen and plenty of storage. I went whole hog and bought the loaded one: High-end nVidia graphics that can be switched off to save battery life; tons of cool stuff like the ability to log in via fingerprint and facial recognition; and the strangely speedy Windows Vista Business, which appears much better behaved than the Home variants. In effect, you end up with a terrific looking, tiny, highly capable ultra light laptop that runs forever on battery for about a third the price of the MacBook Air or those little Sony Vaios, with the tradeoff being the Intel Atom processor rather than a Core Duo. It’s good enough to be your primary machine as long as you’re not, say, processing video. (It runs Gears of War. No, seriously. Here it is running Crysis.) Recommended.

Having a lot of people in a group carrying would increase the odds of having an armed person who is willing to engage the terrorists. This would not only provide resistance but also spur others, i.e., frozen police officers, to engage. In an emergency, the first person to engage is the catalyst to move the crowd from onlookers frozen by indecision to action, either to provide assistance or in situation such as Mumbai, to confront.

Force Science Institute research at Minnesota State University found that even naive shooters are effective in mid to close combat ranges that such an attack would entail. Their research covered police engagements with inexperienced shooters but it has relevance here. Even a complete neophyte can be effective in a gun fight. What is needed is a willingness to engage.

This should come as no surprise to readers of Jeff Cooper. Or even Robert Heinlein. I suspect the problem is that the Indian police were trained, or at least acculturated, not to shoot without orders. That’s an approach that doesn’t work in fast-moving situations like this one.

MORE: For those who didn’t get the Heinlein reference — shocking that such folk exist, but what can you do? — it’s this: “Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.”

November 29, 2008

November 29, 2008

WASHINGTON POST:Rangel Should Give Up His Chairmanship. “At a time when President-elect Barack Obama is holding frequent news conferences to reassure the markets and the American people that he is ready to lead the nation to economic recovery, the last thing he will need is a chairman of Ways and Means caught up in a swirl of serious allegations.”

November 29, 2008

November 29, 2008

November 29, 2008

TOM SMITH ON TALK OF A GREEN NEW DEAL: “Or is it the New Green Deal? Whatever it is, I think it is remarkable and my bet is it is going to be a big fiasco. I think all of the VC money going into it, and I think it is a lot, is spurred on more by the hope of government subsidies in one form or another than by real economics. It strikes me as a strange sort of mania. It looks like we are pouring a lot of money we don’t have into technologies that very well may not work to solve a problem we are not sure we have.”

November 29, 2008

November 29, 2008

HMM: Rubin, Under Fire, Defends His Role at Citi. “Under fire for his role in the near-collapse of Citigroup Inc., Robert Rubin said its problems were due to the buckling financial system, not its own mistakes, and that his role was peripheral to the bank’s main operations even though he was one of its highest-paid officials.” Sounds kinda self-serving, but since it’s still the Obama honeymoon he’ll probably get a pass. Though if he does, it will force the Dems to throttle back on their blame-Wall-Street talk . . . .

November 29, 2008

GLOBAL WARMING CAMPAIGN LOSING STEAM: “There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries, including Canada.”

November 28, 2008

The Mumbai attacks represent a scenario that few Western police and security forces have dared envision. Fewer still have prepared for it.

The basic strategy: use a large number of attackers to overwhelm a target city’s ability to respond, and then suddenly switch focus to high value targets and seize hostages.

Of course, if significant numbers of citizens were armed, the response would be much harder to overwhelm.

UPDATE: Reader Andrew Samet writes:

So you think that ordinary citizens armed with handguns would slow down a surprise attack by trained paramilitary forces armed with automatic weapons, grenades and who knows what else? I’m curious how you see that scenario playing out.

The way I see it, if terrorists such as these could rely on a “significant number” (and I don’t know what that means, exactly – 10 percent? 20 percent?) of their targets carrying guns, they wouldn’t bother taking hostages. They’d just slaughter everyone in sight. They might take a few hits, but they’d have planned for that, just like any army would.

Well, let’s see. There were about 25 terrorists in Mumbai, according to the reports I’ve seen. I’m not sure how many people were at the Taj hotel but it’s a big place. Say it’s 2000 and 10% are armed. That’s 200 vs. 25 (and it’s really better odds than that, since I don’t think there were 25 terrorists at the Taj, but rather 25 overall; these numbers will likely turn out to be wrong, but probably not wrong enough to affect this analysis.) Now the 25 terrorists were practiced at working together, and probably fairly proficient (though I saw an Indian commando saying they were skilled because “most people cannot operate an AK rifle or throw a grenade” which isn’t, by itself, a stirring tribute to their military skills). Nonetheless, 1-8 odds, even with a weapons and training advantage, aren’t great. Would they take hostages? It would probably be a lot harder. Would that prevent raids like this? Maybe not, but if you’re just out to kill people and not take hostages, why not just use a car-bomb? Plus, when your “victims” are shooting back at you and killing you, they’re not really victims any more, are they? Kinda undercuts the whole terrorism game.

Meanwhile, reader D.A. Rodgers emails:

You wrote, after excerpting Thompson:

“Of course, if significant numbers of citizens were armed, the response would be much harder to overwhelm.”

Thus, Texas will be last place to face this kind of terrorism.

Seriously, this reminds me very much of the situation after the Rodney King verdict. In L.A., where no law-abiding citizen (Korean-Americans excepted) carries (or even owns) a gun, the rioters were able to “use a large number of attackers to overwhelm a target city’s ability to respond.” In Houston, attempts were made to start a similar riot in response to the Rodney King verdict. Would-be rioters shot from the freeway into the neighborhoods. The residents shot back.

End result? No riot. Not even one Ranger.

We saw armed Houstonians patrolling their own streets after Hurricane Rita, too. I’ll note that it hasn’t been that long — only a few generations — since people expected to have to resist brigands, etc., in all sorts of situations. Back to the future?

ANOTHER UPDATE: According to Reuters, there were only ten terrorists. That would make the odds 20-1 in favor of the good guys in the hypothetical above, which would seem to be quite a burden for the terrorists to overcome. But Reuters calls them “militants.”

MORE: Reader Peter Sterne writes: ‘Your reader, Andrew Samet, expressed skepticism about an armed citizenry’s ability to successfully fight a trained paramilitary force. I kind of remember something about an armed citizenry successfully taking on a trained military very early in the history of this country … it’s not a perfect analogy with Mumbai, and everyone was much better acquainted with firearms back then, but, you know, I’m just sayin.’”

STILL MORE: Dave Hardy comments: “I really wouldn’t give ten men attacking a few thousand Tucsonans much of a chance. About 2% of Pima County has a CCW permit; others carry openly or have one in their car (you don’t need a permit to have a holstered gun in the glove compartment). So an attack on 2,000 people means an attack on *at least* forty who have a gun on them, and more who will have one available in seconds. A fair number of whom will be behind the attackers’ backs.”

No guarantees on how it turns out, of course — but from the attacker’s point of view, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because when you attack a bunch of unarmed people, well, the guarantees are a lot closer to hand . . . .

FINALLY: Reader Drew Kelley comments: “It seems a lot of people need to be reminded why the Japanese were very reluctant to launch an invasion of the United States proper. And then, after assimilating that information, they need to refamiliarize themselves with the basics of being a rifleman, and pistol marksmanship. It seems we are surrounded by crocodile feeders.”

November 28, 2008

MORE ON Rosie O’Donnell’s flop: “Is it that people just don’t like Rosie anymore, that no one wants variety shows anymore, or is it just the combination of Rosie and variety that’s poison? Writing the headline to this post, I typo’d ‘old-fashioned variety sow,’ which seemed like a clue from my not-very-nice subconscious.”

November 28, 2008

OIL COMPANY ROBOT SHOOTS VIDEO of rare giant squid. “As oil companies and their ROVs spend more time in the bathypelagic zone, more discoveries are sure to follow, experts say. Eager for hard-to-come-by deep-sea video and data, some biologists are formally aligning themselves with the companies.”

November 28, 2008

SOMETHING DIFFERENT: Bill Roggio on the Mumbai attacks. “The Mumbai attack is something different. Foreign assault teams that likely trained and originated from outside the country infiltrated a major city to conduct multiple attacks on carefully chosen targets. The primary weapon was the gunman, not the suicide bomber. The attack itself has paralyzed a city of 18 million. And two days after the attack began, Indian forces are still working to root out the terror teams.” If lots of ordinary people in the hotels had been armed, it probably wouldn’t have worked as well . . . . (Via Jules Crittenden, who has much more).

UPDATE: Some further analysis. “Since the period of suicide terror, terror organizations have upgraded to include paramilitary fighting units, as opposed to singular acts of terror. . . . The events taking place in Mumbai must act as a warning and turning point in the world’s treatment of the local terror armies that base themselves in various parts of the world, and threaten the world’s stability as a whole.”

November 28, 2008

November 28, 2008

A BLACK FRIDAY REPORT from LawHawk. Plus, another report from Paul Havemann in Northern New Jersey:

Here in north NJ, there seems to be plenty of activity at the Rockaway Mall. The wife and I got there about 9 am (no predawn vigils for us!), and there was, literally, hardly a parking spot to be found. Judging by the stream of shoppers laden with bags, it won’t be a bleak Friday for retailers.

I hope that’s right, though I suppose the deep discounts ensure that it won’t be very profitable even if sales are high. Oh, well. Meanwhile, crowds were big in Knoxville. “Big crowds greeted such retailers as Best Buy, Target and Belk. By 7:30 a.m. the parking lot at West Town Mall was full.” Also, the outlet malls near Dollywood were packed. More here.

UPDATE: Reader Dirk Schulbach writes: “Date line Woodburn, Oregon, 10:45 PM, Thanksgiving evening. Northbound I-5 lined up 1/2 mile before the exit waiting to get off freeway, southbound I-5 a 3 mile backup waiting to get off the freeway. The Woodburn Outlet Mall was opening at 11 PM and the huge parking lot at the mall was filled to capacity and the frontage roads feeding them packed solid in both directions, pretty much gridlocked. And lots of traffic headed south from Portland towards the mall. Worst economy since the 1930′s? I don’t think so. “

November 28, 2008

November 28, 2008

THE ALBANY TIMES-UNION:Shameless, Mr. Rangel. “If Mr. Dingell can lose his control of a powerful committee, who else might? Someone just nominate Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee? We’ll second that. Mr. Rangel should have been gone already. . . . The chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws already has been caught not paying taxes on vacation property he owns in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Rangel kept his post, though, thanks to House Democrats who have a double standard when it comes to ethics laws. . . . Now Mr. Rangel is back in the news. The New York Times reported the sordid story earlier this week of how Mr. Rangel at once took care of an oil drilling company and himself.”

November 28, 2008

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